Again; I'll explain the "Erdei" - my Fairies - last.
Witches and Jedi were easy to place immediately. Jedi require Will to stay one with the force but also Strength for their many trials. Witches similarly need Learning to understand their craft. But here again I wanted to break with D&D tradition. I wanted my spell-casters to be less the famous "squishy wizards" and more in-the-moment and in-the-know. I realized that by making Wil one of their prime attributes I could have Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax: my spell-casters wouldn't be bookish wizards, but rather determined and shrewd.
The Stout dwarves required strength, obviously. But it occurred to me that if their other attribute was Wit, I could have street-smart, canny dwarves. How else could they be the world's artificers?
With dwarves placed, I decided to dispense with human warriors. To me it made little sense to have two warrior classes, and with (some) magic use and other skills, dwarves run rings around warriors. So do elves for that matter. Buh-bye.
My elves are effectively Grey aliens; lithe and quick but also knowing a lot of lore. So, they fit between Agility and Learning.
My halflings would fit nicely between Wit and Agility. At this point, my ring of attributes was complete.
But where was my Fairy race? I still had one type of magic to get into the game: druidic magic. That worked perfectly with a Fairy race. But where could they fit? With the Mystics? Druids never struck me as Charismatic. With the Wizards? How could I fit witch magic with earth magic without it feeling shoe-horned in. Also, would druids really be "squishy wizards", with penalties to strength and agility? That doesn't sound very fey.
Then I noticed the hollow space in the middle of my diagram. Could I cheat, and put my Fairies there? Druids are about balance, so it made sense to not associate druids with any particular attribute.
And so was born a race of gravely serious druid-warriors, aghast at the wreckage wrought by man and dwarf. If my dwarves were no longer silent and withdrawn, my otherworldly druid Fairies could be. Strong and silent woodland Fairies, very different from elves and men and dwarves and my little halflings.
Now I just needed a name. It had to evoke the wilds. But it couldn't be something already taken - that would cause all kinds of problems down the road. All kinds of elven and sylvan races had been named over the past 25 years. In the end, I settled on "erdei", which is Hungarian for "sylvan" - a word I found on google translate. Like my halflings, these erdei have a write-up of their own.
2012.12.12
I'm adopting the Dungeons and Dragons game "Labyrinth Lord" to suit my tastes - the changes have required a fey druid race of tall thin giants
2014-12-12
I'm adapting the Dungeons and Dragons game "Labyrinth Lord" to my own tastes. This has involved a complete reboot of the Halfling.
Ambition is the enemy of man. It stunts his ability to simplify the day. It is in simplicity we find peace.
—Allan Watts